Customer Reviews

An Introduction to Kant's Aesthetics: Core Concepts and Problems

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I found this book to be very helpful in understanding Kant's aesthetics. Kant's philosophy is notoriously difficult - so it is nice to have access to books such as this one, that interpret Kant's writing in a non-technical way for a contemporary audience. The book analyzes the overall argument of the Critique of Aesthetic Judgment (the first part of the Critique of Judgment) in a clear, conversational, and questioning style that is appropriate for beginners and more advanced readers of Kant. The author skillfully uses possible objections and apparent ambiguities in Kant's text as a way of delving more deeply into the substance of what Kant is saying. The author states in the preface that the book does not presuppose prior knowledge of Kant's writings, and I found this to be true on the whole. The book does indeed point out many connections between Kant's aesthetics and the epistemology of Kant's Critique of Pure Reason. There is extensive discussion of the four "moments" of the judgment of taste, as well as sections on genius, the sublime, the connection between morality and the beautiful, and the question of whether there can be genius in mathematics.

Several extra features make this book stand out from other introductory works on Kant. First, technical terms are highlighted in bold in the text and defined in the extensive glossary at the end of the book. Second, at the end of each chapter subsection there is an annotated list of some of the secondary literature that addresses that particular topic. Third, at the end of the book there is a summary and overview of the main points of the book.